Notes on effective writing at work, school, and home by Philip Vassallo, Ed.D.

Friday, November 30, 2012

Five Things I've Learned from Teaching in China, Part 5

[This post is
the last of a five-part series on what I have learned from teaching in China.]

Entrance to the Beijing International MBA program

At the end of each of my three
classes at BiMBA, I asked my students to say one thing that they learned in the
course. One student, Cara, who delivered a perfect presentation and raised the
level of her team's performance, stood in front of the class and said, “What I learned is the
value of trusting your teammates. We learned to trust each other by agreeing to
meet one night for dinner. We sat in a restaurant, and no one opened a laptop to look at the presentations. We just got to know each other. We ate together, talked about our families, our plans, and our interests. Then when we got together in class the next week to practice as a team, we made great progress."

This lesson was the greatest one that I learned as a teacher in Beijing. I constantly told my students to work as a team but I did not tell them how they might accelerate that process. Cara showed us all how--by becoming like a family.

Being in Beijing for 30 days was a great pleasure for me. Yes, I enjoyed the outstanding Chinese cuisine. Yes, I visited the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall, and those are amazing sights. But what I will never forget are these lessons learned from my students.

PHIL VASSALLO

Philip Vassallo is a communication and education consultant. Phil is the author of three instructional books (HOW TO WRITE FAST UNDER PRESSURE, THE ART OF ON-THE-JOB WRITING, and THE ART OF E-MAIL WRITING), two play collections (QUESTIONS ASKED OF DYING DREAMS and A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS: FOUR SHORT PLAYS), two essay collections (PERSON TO PERSON: ESSAYS FROM TWO CENTURIES and THE INWARDNESS OF THE OUTWARD GAZE: LEARNING AND TEACHING THROUGH PHILOSOPHY), and two poetry collections (LIKE THE DAY I WAS BORN: 40 POEMS, 40 PLACES, 40 DAYS and AMERICAN HAIKU). Twenty-one of his plays are licensed through Samuel French, Heuer Publishing, and Brooklyn Publishing. He holds a doctorate in Educational Theory and Philosophy from Rutgers University and received a New Jersey State Council on the Arts grant for playwriting. Phil can be reached at Phil@PhilVassallo.com.